Dutch MP and hard line critic of Islam Geert Wilders has lodged a police complaint against an internet hate rap. The rappers, who dubbed themselves Youssef and Kamal, threatened to cut or even "saw off" Wilders' trademark wig-like peroxide-blond hair.

At around ten-to-seven this morning (BST) the NASA space probe Deep Impact lived up to its name and smashed into the Comet Tempel-1. The impact sent up a cloud of dust and gas far bigger than anyone had expected, making the comet, briefly, almost 11-times brighter than it was previously.

An unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer creates a means for hackers to take over vulnerable Windows PCs, security researchers warn. The flaw stems from a security bug in a COM Object (Javaprxy.dll) that might be exploited by a malicious web site to cause a memory corruption.

Tech Digest
Certified gadget obsessives Tech Digest and Shiny Shiny scour Gizmoville for the oddest digital goodies, while Bayraider keeps tabs on the best and worst of eBay. Here are this week's top gadget picks:

Politicians in Europe are set to ink new regulations governing the efficiency of computers and a variety of other electrical goods and components, as part of a Directive aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions throughout the region.

The German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Housing will next year lift the ban on the use of mobile phones on commercial flights, according to German newsmagazine Focus. The German Aerospace Centre (DLR) says that mobile phone signals do not interfere with onboard electronics. Several European airlines say that they too are considering the removal of the in-flight ban on GSM phones.

Virus writers have created a new Symbian Trojan called Doomboot-A that loads an earlier mobile virus (Commwarrior-B) onto vulnerable smartphones. Doomboot-A also preventing infected phones from booting up properly. This cocktail of viral effects spells extra trouble for Symbian Series 60 smartphone users, especially those who play around with pirated games.

As Java celebrated its tenth birthday last week at the Java One conference, the software technology was in a very different position to that envisaged by its creators at Sun in 1995. Few then could have hoped that it would have taken such a commanding position as the primary software environment outside the Microsoft world – but many at Sun would have wished that their own company would have been the chief beneficiary of that, rather than IBM, whose software efforts were largely rejuvenated by Java.

In the battle of man vs. machine, man has been utterly trounced. In fact, supercomputer Hydra's five triumphs out of six over human grandmaster Michael Adams dwarfs even the All Blacks' recent demolition of the British Lions. Adams managed to squeeze a draw in the second bout, salvaging some pride.

Quocirca's changing channels
Over 60 per cent of businesses who manage their email internally use Microsoft Exchange Server for all or part of their requirement. Less than half of these are using the latest version – Exchange Server 2003. There is a significant opportunity for resellers if these organisations can be persuaded it is worth the money and effort to upgrade.

The founder of tablet computing pioneer Go Corporation has revived long dormant allegations of corporate wrongdoing with an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft. Jerry Kaplan alleges that Go technology demonstrated to Microsoft technicians under non-disclosure was used to help develop competing products.

A strain of spyware that displays pornographic pop-ups has retained its place as the top spyware nuisance on the net last month. ISTbar was responsible for 3.5 per cent of infections detected by Panda Software's free online malware scanner, more than any other spyware or adware application.